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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955634">Aging</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blank_Ideas/pseuds/Blank_Ideas'>Blank_Ideas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:14:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,549</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blank_Ideas/pseuds/Blank_Ideas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of short chapters prescribing a slow process with consequences.</p><p>Chapter 1- Barnabas<br/>Chapter 2- Mordechai <br/>Chapter 3- Peter</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Barnabas Bennett/Mordechai Lukas, Mordechai Lukas/Jonah Magnus, Peter Lukas/Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Barnabas Bennett and Jonah Magnus had met while the former was nine and the latter was eleven. At the time Jonah had been about a head taller then Barnabas with this ever present sulkiness morphing a rather cute face in protest of having been put in charge of entertaining his father’s colleague’s son. Barnabas on his part had been short and chubby with rounded cheeks and freckles Jonah often made fun of when they found themselves roaming the wooden grounds near where Jonah lived. Jonah wore smart clothes, dressed in fine shirts and insistent on wearing flowery cravats despite his age while Barnabas was more content to wear what he was given and did not care if he looked rather plain in comparison to Jonah who, ever since he was ten, had developed tendency to strut- like a peacock as Barnabas’s wary father had put it.</p><p>Barnabas did not know what a peacock walked like, but he supposed if they were anything like Jonah they must be rather pretty.</p><p> </p><p>They played tag often, Jonah being the instigating partner as he usually slapped Barnabas on the shoulder and sprinted off into the opposite direction, into the vast woods where Barnabas with his ever so clumsy mannerisms would struggle to keep up. He hated the game, his legs always ached after leaping over so many fallen tree trunks and often he found himself the subject of Jonah’s ever so malicious teasing whenever he finally tripped on a bloated tree root and skinned his knee. The ridicule made his cheeks flush and often swelled tears into his eyes. To that Jonah would stop and sigh and offer the tentative hand of friendship- not even grimacing as Barnabas’s hand clasped his despite how snotty it was.</p><p>Other instances they played hide and seek as within the woods the shadows were thick and bushes and shrubbery plentiful. Jonah had made it a point very early on to find the best hiding places and lord them over Barnabas who, as a result would be made to spend hours wandering about the silent forest searching after his only playmate. Being gradually creeped out as the passion for the game seeped out of him, he searched on and on until Jonah eventually grew tired of his ‘obliviousness’ and pulled himself out of whatever pile of leaves he’d been lounging in. He’d always teased Barnabas for that, his lack of ‘seeing what's right in front of him’ though Barnabas referred to it as Jonah being a sneaky twit and moving about.</p><p>Though he had enjoyed it that time Jonah had gotten stuck in a tree.</p><p> </p><p>Slowly time passed and when Barnabas had been groomed into a polite thirteen year old, Jonah was a young man: a rebel, a heartbreaker and a discipline case. The elder was sent down south, to England or rather London, where he would be educated and hopefully melded into something more presentable as the only son of the Magnus family.</p><p>This did not stop the pair from sending letters. No, avidly was a letter sent for every one that arrived, sometimes two were sent in rapid succession due to an unfortunate ‘lapse’ in memory or rather just another excuse to misplace the comma at the starts of their letters and dance around such as fact as though the entirety of the small woods they were surely destroying for paper to fund their interactions, was ballroom and they the only pair on the dance floor. They did not need music. But Barnabas learnt to play piano regardless and Jonah was tutored in manners needed for civil society which included the waltz and tango.</p><p>Barnabas had once had his portrait done as many did, finally reaching eighteen as a young man within the prime of his life, he would soon enough start a career under his father and like most did, he had his portrait done. Presenting himself as a fresh faced young adult with neat hair and shy smile, clean moon shaped glasses he had been quite happy with the results and when in private and with his own small savings he’d commissioned a copy that accompanied the next letter to Jonah. In return he’d received something a little more uncouth.</p><p> </p><p>Barnabas was pining and twenty when they next met again.</p><p>His legs had ached as he'd pulled himself up and out of the carriage onto his own two feet after what had been a very long drive between cities, eventually having made his way to the street, unaccustomed to the flat pavement and the rank smell of what must have been the Thames as he fixed his blazer neatly and combed his fingers through his hair. He had not expected to be so easily tackled by Jonah’s lithe form that wrapped tightly around Barnabas’s belly and squeezed with a ferocity for attention. Before Barnabas had much chance to even turn around there was a hooked nose sifting through the short hairs on the back of his neck and a delighted hum rumbling against him. Jonah had smothered him in affection, so much so Barnabas had not felt the heat in his cheeks lessen a single moment during his entire three day stay whilst he was flaunted in cafes and shown the better drinking spots and ‘men's clubs’ as Jonah had dubbed them. A blissful three days of listening to Jonah’s voice as the man enthusiastically vented the many thoughts running through his head. He’d been delighted when Jonah mentioned his newest project- an institute of knowledge.</p><p>Delighted because his Jonah had finally found a passion other than malicious teasing which was just what he’d said.</p><p>There was a particular morning spent in the bathroom, Jonah stood over the mirror he liked to keep as his fingers rubbed over the slight bags that had finally begun beneath his as always electric blue eyes. He’d been muttering something, about getting old when he looked up to Barnabas through the clear surface of the mirror as the shorter man stood beside his shoulder and told him to treasure his youth, Barnabus told him that he was only two years younger and that the ever present source of his affection was beautiful regardless of dark bags. Jonah had snorted and Barnabus told him to sleep more.</p><p> </p><p>Barnabas grew stockier over time, thick and heavy set with an unchanging approach to his facial hair, he knew he preferred it clean shaven as did Jonah which is why he never particularly experimented with it. His clothing choices changed though, unwilling to be left behind over the decades and growing old just as easily, he was affluent enough when his business prospects worked out though often enough he ran into bad luck. Still played piano. Still enjoyed walking those very same woods alongside Jonah on sunny afternoons and he certainly enjoyed holding hands- snatching chances to lean up and steal kisses with wiry smiles, letting Jonah splutter and bolster at being caught unaware. Yes he aged, of course he did, matured in the face with crinkles from both smiling and fretting far too much according to Jonah, matured in his bones as they ached in the cold and matured in his personality as he found himself more and more aware. </p><p>Not seeing still- but aware.</p><p>He felt the older he got, the more things changed and while that is an obvious conclusion, when in context to a man you’ve felt grievous affection for your entire life and a latter comer who you’d grown close to over two decades near enough, it was a shocking revelation. Suddenly realising that his bed was cold because neither had left their work on a night. Noticing that Jonah was fretting more and more about his age and how his manners had crumbled over the years with such intrusive questions and often enough Barnabas could swear he was being tailed, he joked with Jonah that he did not need to be paranoid in his old age as to have someone him follow him but Jonah had something akin to him not understanding- not knowing or seeing. And Barnabas had felt very out of his depths.</p><p> </p><p>Looking at his… lover, now, Jonah could see what the past five years had done to him and could feel the niggling pang of guilt that Jonah had spent so long distancing himself from in his self admitted insatiable hunger for knowledge. Poor Barnabas, forty five years old and dead upon the cushioned stool, slumped over an aged piano in the loneliest ballroom Jonah had ever had the pleasure of entering. The mist rolled and roiled upon the glass of the windows, flowing forward in an ever constant need to isolate and distance all, Mordechai clearly growing agitated with the time Jonah was taking, wasting apparently. But Jonah didn’t care, he wanted to know what Barnabas looked like dead, if he needed to he’d open his eyes and see what was right in front of him.</p><p>Grey haired Barnabas, pale faced and sad looking. There was a knot between his brows that would not be leaving anytime soon or ever if he was lucky. Something about the concern that twisted his expression from something that the depths of Jonah’s mind had hoped would be peaceful. There was worry, and pain and anguish and his nails seemed thoroughly chewed as he often did when anxious as a child. Jonah remembered watching him when they were young and it was funny to watch him naw as he intermittently called for Jonah out in the woods.</p><p>Jonah wondered if he called for him when he died. If the swan song upon the piano that still echoed in the hollow of Jonah’s ribs was for him or the desolation of being used up.</p><p> </p><p>Barnabas was heavy in his arms as he lifted him, grunting a little at the weight and peered outwards to the mist that encircled the surrounding area and even went as far as to tickle his ankles. </p><p>The lonely could have his mind, but Jonah was feeling sentimental- perhaps it was age.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mordechai Lukas and Jonah Magnus were both adults when they met, Jonah having reached a prime twenty one and certainly enjoying all the privileges that such an age offered while Mordechai had already reached twenty seven and was terse with life as it was. Their meeting was not set up, entirely incidental through the orchestration of one Robert Smirke who, for all his innocent bolster and talk of equality in society and architecture, he certainly had not recognised the imbalance that combining two agents of sarcasm would cause. They met in a pub, Smirke and Magnus seated at a lonesome table in the corner as the two quite energetically discussed plans for the future, Magnus as ever guiding the conversation with a steady mix of his as ever insatiable questions and his constant need to chatter and share whatever thought flowed through his head. Smirke would smile, nod, drink and hum appreciatively, as always quite taken with Magnus’s enthusiastic hand gestures and amused by his inability to keep on topic for more than a few moments.</p><p>Mordechai had walked in, being drug over by the genial tone Smirke had used to announce him with. At first Magnus was immediately taken aback, examining the awkward looking man with a quick flick of his eyes. The older male was raven haired and tall, taller than most other men Magnus had met and stood at least shoulders above Magnus with his posture seeming rigid and straight, refusing to slacken and decrease his impressive stature as was the case with his broad shoulders too that he seemed to take as a manner of employment to keep rigidly straight and refused to slouch them forward. This combined with his ever present chin tilt, a little up and above everybody, made him seem pompous and arrogant- Magnus had voiced as much.</p><p> </p><p>Mordechai had a pair of sharp eyes, deep set with thick dark lashes framing what Magnus could only call a storm upon the horizon, so grey and cloudy yet all the while distinct and heavy with grim energy, these eyes quieted Magnus without so much of a glance. The shorter man felt his throat go dry and the breath in his lungs go sparse, a rapid heat grappling for purchase in his narrow chest as he throttled the sudden pounding of his heart in favour of pulling his best irritated expression. Mordechai smirked at him, grunting a sense of greeting to Smirke as he sat across Magnus and seemed to relish the silence that came with such a thing. He looked at Magnus, and the world dropped away.</p><p>Never once had Magnus been so overcome by such cool before, this intense frozen feeling that divided him and the whole room, muffling it’s sensations till he felt like the only real, warm thing. An individual but not alone, just special because he was warm and real while others were frigid and chilled.</p><p>This world where he was the singular, the epicentre, dropped away the moment Moderechai chuckled, his expression shifting only slightly as his deep voice rumbled in softly with amusement that Smirke did not seem to recognise as the architect continued to speak regardless, but Magnus noticed, his spine tingling all the whilst.</p><p> </p><p>The two met up frequently from that point on for various reasons.</p><p>There was banter often, insults and verbal blows thrown between the two whether in a jovial mood or not.</p><p>A particular instance of something a little bit softer was when Mordechai had just turned thirty and was ignoring Jonah’s letters. It was not that he didn't like them or that he didn’t read them, he just knew that they didn’t mean the moon and stars to him unlike that hapless yet handsome Barnabas who wrote as fervently as Jonah did and to whom Mordechai was also more than glad to ignore as well. It was just that, Mordechai didn't care much to ramble upon a page as it was not something he would care much to do in person regardless. He was a man of few words, always had been as a child and more so with time, he didn’t see much the point in long paragraphs of epic prose lamenting the latest problems that plagued his life as Jonah commonly did and he did not feel the need to express the sweetness he felt when it would be simpler to just smile the next time he saw Barnabas. It seemed often that the older Mordechai got the more he valued the distance a lack of information gave, emotional clarity so that the moments after isolation seemed all the sweeter. It was that and he had a reputation to keep. More so to the point, Jonah wrote letters full of words about his day and his thoughts and feelings and problems and while Mordechai read them and treasured within his desk, he elected not to write back. </p><p>Which for some reason Jonah took issue with.</p><p>The shorter man made no small show as he had stormed within Mordechai's office and demanded to know about his lack of his response, looking at him in that moment Mordechai could feel the slightest hint of hesitation, unused to seeing the ever spotless Jonah Magnus so messy looking. There were dark smears beneath his eyes caused by a clear lack of sleep and his chestnut hair seemed ruffled and greasy in comparison to his usual pride that wrought effort in his appearance. Younger and so full of loud, dramatic words as Jonah was he'd proclaimed Mordechai foul and cruel and just about any other similar derivative until Mordechai had eventually caved and held him softly for an evening while murmuring a slow and steady scolding or rather talk that had none of his usual blunt anger at such theatrics and instead went on ignored by the tired and clearly neglected feeling Jonah who lay in his arms with not a single care more.</p><p> </p><p>Things went on like this for years, you could almost say Mordechai was amused by the pattern between the two just as much as Jonah seemed to relish his attention and whine at the lack of it. A common enough thing really. But often enough did it result in such stormy arguments that the bond between the pair seemed almost irreparable. When Mordechai had been forty five and Jonah dragging his feet to forty, the sparring of words and frustration grew into a hotter debate the likes of which had even Mordechai quivering with a rock melded of pure and solid rage. He felt so obstinate to Jonah and to Mordechai the other seemed childish or juvenile the way he spat his words, acting as though Mordechai were truly some idiot for him to pull apart whenever he made a very basic mistake. They had stood there, in the woods where Jonah and Barnabas had apparently grown up and cussed and cursed until they were both heaving and red. Jonah’s lithe form shaking with anger as he defied his need to make exclamation points with his hands and instead balled them up tightly by his sides, defying Mordechai who had over time grown less and less an unmoving brick wall and instead had taken to hunching his shoulders forward a little, arms crossed over his broad and still firm chest. In the light the white that had begun to devour his raven hair with no pause for grey shone ever so slightly and the slight reminder of what they were becoming made Jonah sick to his stomach. This is what they were becoming really, old and fickle monsters marked by unchristian activities the likes of which they had been condemned for by all they knew. Barnabas was clueless, Smirke wanted nothing to do with either of them anymore and all their other friends had found excuses to fade away within the smog of time and disillusionment- progress. That’s what they called it. But Jonah felt betrayed, he felt angry, he wanted to keep them and know them forever, he needed to see them grow old and grew and he wanted to watch them wither. The need, the impulse it consumed him, middle aged and yet still such a raw avatar, unable to control that oppressive sticky need to know despite how it squashed his cheer and his time to unwind. Mordechai instead felt all too clung too, he had a family and a rather wide pool of heirs but that did not mean he wanted it, that was his patron as while Mordechai could distinguish his own desire for distance and space from that of his patron’s hunger for those that feared to be so alone- Jonah could not.</p><p>So Jonah would press him and squeeze him and cling to him for affection and knowledge and memories all of which Jonah had no real right too and could be denied at any moment. Mordechai felt suffocated in his lack of freedom and Jonah felt betrayed for the rejection.</p><p> </p><p>They would get over this, as they did time and time again, performing this rage filled dance until even Barnabas had stopped playing to their tune. Barnabas had died at forty five, Mordechai being eight years his senior and already following similar steps. He watched Jonah, the two face to face after months of egregious silence. Noticing the fresh length of Jonah’s hair, how he must have been growing it out, Mordechai did not comment as Jonah took his hand with his own wrinkled one and the two walked the cemetery alone in a sort of dull quiet. Hand in hand. </p><p>Jonah did not ask a single question, he didn’t need too anymore Mordechai recognised.</p><p>Mordechai didn’t deny him the familiar touch, but Jonah knew Mordechai’s skin itched at the sensation.</p><p> </p><p>They adapted as monsters tended to.</p><p>Over time Mordechai seemed to grow more rigid and more stony, he was still strong and did not seem to shrink as many did with age but the wrinkles upon his brow were particularly deep from when he so commonly furrowed them while deep in thought as he mulled over books and propositions. His hands also grew more worn, lips more chapped as he called upon the great clump of smoke that was the lonely over time, full of the industry and bustling bodys yet antiquated divisions and a lack of common ground between even the basest of people. It was oh so easy to get lost in the streets of London especially if you lacked the ties that would normally warm you from the cold.</p><p>He still had that deep rumbling voice and Jonah could appreciate his smirk every now and again.</p><p> </p><p>Looking at his lover now, Jonah could see the hunger that lurked beneath his gradually thinning frame and could feel the knowledge bubble up in the back of his mind that Mordechai would die, too sick and too weak to feed his patron. That's what happens when you get old though isn’t it? Sweet Mordechai, eighty years old and wheezing out what was once monstrous snores, the oaf now fragile looking with his pale skin and noticeable veins. He laid out, alone in his large white bed with no wife or children willing to mourn by his side, to grieve such a momentous loss of life. Mordechai would hate it if he knew Jonah were here, just as much as Jonah hated seeing him so grey and so lifeless yet clinging on all the same. Jonah stroked over Mordechai’s knuckles smoothly, letting the soft pad of his thumb dip and smooth over his skin and the ridges left in what was once so strong and healthy and young, now decrepit and decayed. Corruption avatars just did not know where to put their noses any longer.</p><p>Mordechai would be gone soon, another old man in a grave.</p><p>Jonah would miss him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sorry this one took so long, spelling mistakes and weird structure are liable. I don't want to disappoint but here, it took me a while.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Peter Lukas is different, sure he’s part of the same story, but his importance did not begin when he met Jonah Magnus that fateful day at his grandmother’s funeral when he was only sixteen and too tall, gangly and thin, no. Peter Lukas began at the age of thirteen, wandering about in the city about ten miles from his family home, far shorter, when things began to knit together for him. It started beneath the rain. Looking up at the grey clouds and taking in the clumps that lined it and dropped an immense blanket of cold dark water, as if tears were dropping from a funeral shroud encasing the entire city till it too was a corpse- cold and miserable, desolate of life. Peter realised he did not mind this, the coins in his pocket gave him enough to afford a hot drink at the corner store on the edge of the street and he found himself a curb to sit upon, where he may watch the lonesome neon lights and enjoy the softened quiet that the rain always brought beside it. His raincoat, a garish yellow thing he received from Simon Fairchild for his twelfth birthday, was soaked through easy enough and Peter suspected that was partially the point. No, Peter understood what it was like to be alone, and really- he enjoyed it. This was the beginning.</p><p> </p><p>Peter Lukas and James Wright would meet while Peter was sixteen and Wright within the latter stages of his seventies. The two were very much opposites with Peter in possession of classic crisp raven waves of dark hair and the beginning of the pubescent sort of stubble lining his pale skinned chin, Wright on the other hand was tanned and thick amidst his middle with age spots upon his hands and wrinkles seeming permanently creased within his brow. The old man smelt of bleach and spoke far too much with a deep voice that irritated Peter as it made him all too aware of the cracks he still felt within his own and how, considering his father, his voice would never be as gruff as he would want it to be. Wright almost seemed to know this- taking great lengths to exert the full depths of his voice and grinning all the while. Like this was some game and Peter was the piglet in the middle.</p><p>So Peter had decided fairly that he did not like Mr Wright, his presence was displeasing and his constant commentary on Peter’s behaviour and the mannerisms of the Lukas family made Peter feel uncomfortably exposed. He hated that Mr Wright took pleasure in it.</p><p>So it was understandable that Peter would feel nothing at Wright’s funeral, except perhaps the slightest tickling of joy that he would never express in the presence of the ever solemn faces of his mother and aunts and uncles, not even with his cousins who at least shared his age range. He never knew where he stood with people like the Lukas family, so desolate of words and expression that he never knew the cues for conversation, so Peter had waited till towards the end of the service to finally break away. It was only when perching upon a step around back with his blazer pulled off and a lit cigarette between his fingers did Peter finally break his stiff mood and smile. Smile into the cold wind and feel so alone in the smug pride of knowing that the beholding bastard was down and Peter was free of awkward dinner parties with the man.  </p><p>For a moment he had been truly at peace with so few inconveniences and boat to escape even those. And then he had met Elias.</p><p> </p><p>That's not to say there were no moments of perfect bliss after this point, no, there was one that always stuck to Peter and melded into a second skin to disguise him from more unsavoury thoughts often enough. A moment of loving peace that always filled him with comfort. He had been twenty two, Elias twenty three. His broad shoulders sheltered beneath the fabric of his freshly tailored suit, this suit being a dark navy in shade to compliment the lightened tone of his hair and the sleeve around his bicep was squeezed tightly and repetitively the whole evening. Ever needy as Elias’s hands were, he’d been full of compliments when Peter had returned from the sea and his solitude. How sweet and loving and not at all teasing Elias had been as he pulled Peter away for dinner and other activities, the memory of his tan face grinning widely up at Peter always made the butterflies in his chest flutter. There wasn’t even a proposal really, just Elias handing him a suit when they got back to the flat and complimenting him on finally filling out with muscle before the cab was hailed and they were getting married. Peter didn’t complain- didn’t see the point and wouldn’t have even if he did.</p><p>Elias and he got married side by side, some would say they were a little young for it, others may just be straight up homophic. But Peter didn’t really care for things like that.</p><p>He was young and not yet hollow.</p><p> </p><p>Things change remarkably fast though don’t they.</p><p>Only thirty and already one marriage has crumbled and another has set up in its stead, his hair hasn’t greyed yet but is naturally a remarkably pale blond that suited him just fine in that he looked just the same as all the other Lukases and could embrace the anonymity of being the same just as easily as they. He picks at his hair, runs his calloused fingers through the wavy strands as he worries his bottom lip and tries to ignore the yearning within his bones. Peter fears what it would mean to yearn, what it would mean to feel alone and miss someone. Elias was the source of this fear quite obviously and the obnoxious little man did nothing to soothe it. As neither had ever been the sort to fix the other’s problems.</p><p>They had had dinner together, another fancy restaurant with people too focused on themselves and business propositions to ever notice him, where Peter could naturally blend in with ease and where Elias would be relentless on picking him apart, green eyes focused and unblinking upon Peter as they both relished the silence that came with fond exasperation. Then Elias had spoken, shared news that Peter really had not wanted to hear and then Peter had left- to go smoke on a doorstep and ignore the sudden plague of thoughts that had descended upon his mind like locusts to a field. Elias was Jonah and the thought was creepy, it raised a lot of questions and as Peter got older and stopped searching for answers, he realised it would be better to not know.</p><p> </p><p>So Peter did not know and Elias in turn knew. This was their dynamic, the constant back and forth flow that would not change over the years no matter the amount of trends Peter would avoid and Elias would leap upon with energy. Peter’s hair went white at forty and yet, despite being older, Elias lagged behind timelessly as always. Peter broadened and developed a rotund stomach and yet Elias remained neat and trim. Peter would wizen with time and Elias would stay desperate to not follow in his footsteps.</p><p>But he did, Elias did age, just as any human did regardless of how adamantly he seemed to try and deny his humanity. Peter remembered it clearly, the morning he first remembered. As always Elias’s apartment was warm to a ridiculous degree as the smaller man lounged beneath a duvet and Peter’s own body heat, Peter had muttered a complaint about how hot it was and all the whilst Elias insisted that he was cold and that Peter would just have to deal with it. In hindsight that was something Peter loved about Elias, his stubbornness even when his cheeks were flushed and surely turning down the thermostat would be better than dying of a heat stroke. But this was the case, and Peter submitted to it as anything was better then having to argue with Elias. He’d settled down, nose nuzzling back into the too soft pillows as Elias cuddled into his front. There were greys at Elias’s temple, he noticed them though still half asleep and counted them till his eyes drooped closed and sleep overcame him. Smiling all the whilst.</p><p> </p><p>At some point around the time Peter had turned forty two a second realization struck him, not quite under the same atmosphere a foggy city emptied of people and enraptured in swirling mist and silence no, it was part way through a turbulent argument with Elias. The pair of them storming up and down the length of it in a flurry of exaggerated movements on Elais’s half and a simple raised voice on Peter’s. He’d crossed his arms over his chest as his mother had always done when she was annoyed but it was amidst the peak of Elias’s exclamations about Peter’s worthlessness that Peter realised he was not annoyed or even irritated, Peter Lukas was angry, rageful even and he didn’t even recognise it. </p><p>He supposed that was the point of it, the point of being lonely. To not feel anything that would have him so out of sorts and peculiar and he realised that while yes, he respected that aspect of his chosen entity, he enjoyed the feeling of being angry. </p><p>Peter liked to be angry. It suited him.</p><p>So Peter was angry and Elias was too, about a heavy mixture of both petty and important things, they were angry together and angry apart and the two fitted it quite well into their regular lives. There was a sort of passion to this anger, the sort that fueled needless teasing and playful bets, it sweetened their few soft moments and made him feel marvelously isolated when he could not express the full brunt of his rage despite Elias having teased at it so much.</p><p> </p><p>They got older.</p><p>Obviously.</p><p>People do that.</p><p>Feelings changed as did appearances, Peter got heavier and stronger as if all that built up rage had given him a concrete base and not even the most intense storm could push him over. All the while Elias stayed light and deft and oh so arrogant. The greys in his temples outnumbered the black though, Peter had pointed that one out.</p><p>Grey dyed black. Irritation turned rage.</p><p>Things changed.</p><p> </p><p>Peter was a hollow man when he died. Hollowed with all his secrets exposed, ribs pried open and his beating heart so thoroughly read it was as though the entire world had examined the text of his deepest thoughts and that the entire world inhabited the Archivist’s eyes. He breathed heavily as he died, lungs taking deep swathes of frozen lonely mist and churning them through his system with a desperate need. He would wither up in a pained wheeze, evaporate into the very same mists he’d seen devour so many people before. Peter became a hollow man in that very moment, an empty husk as if wind had ever taken a solid form. Elias was not there and so Peter ended just as he began.</p><p>Without Jonah.</p>
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